


Rare Affections

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [12]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Daleks - Freeform, Dancing, F/M, Infiltration, Kaled, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Sex Education, Sex exploration, Skaro, Thousand Year War, alternative universe, sex segregation, thal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-31 13:23:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17850269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: After a thousand years of segregation, the male and female halves of Kaled society start to learn to integrate.  The lessons will be interesting, and the homework more so.Contains scenes of violence, mentions of sexual violence





	1. Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter includes discussion of sexuality-related topics from a distinctly alien point of view, including sexual violence and rape.

A thousand years of war was over. The last generation of Kaled soldiers on Skaro could finally lay down their weapons and face a new challenge: one that they had never faced before in their lives.

Women.

It was true: the Women's Section had been opened, and women were walking around in the Dome! Even here, in the Elite Bunker, there were women! Well, those perhaps did not count: they were members of a group called the Daughters of Skaro, and they were - very strange, and rumoured to be aliens of some sort, although they all looked like young Kaled women. The men had been ordered not interact with them, and they had obeyed: every soldier had seen their fellows flogged or killed during training, for disobeying orders. Even if there were women here, right now, they all valued their lives too much to talk to them.

But now there was supposed to be an event. An Event, really: a social event in the Kaled Dome, just like in stories. And there would be women there - and men could attend.

However, first they had to take a lesson. Sexual Basics, it was called.

There were persistent rumours that the Sexual Basics instructor would be a woman, and that she would not be wearing any clothes as part of the lesson. Therefore, when the Elite Security personnel were told to report to one of the empty laboratories after their evening meal, they were prompt to obey.

The first inkling that this lesson would not be as fun as they had hoped was a man who sat in the middle of the chairs that had been drawn up in neat rows, facing a desk and a vidscreen. The man was not a towering presence: if anything he was rather unassuming, slim and faintly prissy, wearing rimless glasses and a black uniform like their own. He had, of course, taken the front row centre spot.

It was Security Commander Nyder. He sat there, not with his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl like thunder on his face - but twice as scary for his reserve, because every man knew exactly what he was capable of. He had gone missing for some months recently, just after the end of the war, and nobody was really all that relieved to have him back.

The men trickled in and sat in the chairs; most of them of course wanted to be near the front, but somehow they managed to leave a circle of empty chairs between themselves and Nyder. If he noticed this, he did not let it show.

The second letdown was the identity of the instructor, who stepped briskly to the front of the room and sat behind the desk. She was a woman - barely.

Esselle, short for Security Liaison, was one of the Daughters of Skaro. And she acted, talked and even dressed like Nyder. Technically, she was his typist. Supposedly, she was some sort of pet of Davros'. The only thing that could be said in her favour was that she certainly filled out the standard Security uniform jodhpurs in an admirable fashion from the rear.

"Good evening," she said, without preamble. "Welcome to Sexual Basics. We're going to discuss some familiar and unfamiliar ideas and material, and I expect you all to sit still and pay attention. Which means," she raised one ironic eyebrow, "that you all keep your pants on. No reason for Maintenance to have to mop this floor. In order to encourage you to save your wrist exercises for later, let me mention in advance that after the lesson is over, I will be distributing study materials. The first printing of 'The Kaled History of Sex'."

She took a promisingly thick booklet from a stack on the desk, laid it in front of her, and leaned forward. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders, and her eyes were bright as she stage-whispered, "It is very, very thoroughly illustrated." And smiled.

Every man in the room smiled back - except for Nyder.

She leafed through the booklet, and the men craned their neck at the flicker of bright photographs on the slick paper. "It's not a pleasant read in places, I should warn you." She took back her smile, and now looked serious. "There are people in here whose decisions affected the course of history for centuries, whose neuroses distorted entire generations. Please bear in mind that as the current generation of the Kaled people, it is your destiny to be the best you can be - not the most slavish imitation of your ancestors at their worst."

She closed the History of Sex and put it aside. "We will begin with sexual orientation. What is it?"

"Top or bottom?" came a faint voice from the back.

"Sorry, no. Your sexual orientation is what gender you prefer to have sex with. A man who prefers to have sex with women is called a heterosexual, and one who prefers sex with men is called a homosexual. A man who likes having sex with both genders is called bisexual, and a man who is consistently uninterested in having sex is asexual. So. What is your sexual orientation?"

Her pointing finger swept the audience, who looked back at her with varying degrees of confusion.

"Basically, you've been told all your life that you're heterosexuals who just happen to only have sex with men, because there aren't any women around. Actually, there were times in Kaled history where you'd all be considered effeminate for having sex with men."

"That doesn't make any sense," objected Kravos. "What's more masculine than having sex with men?"

"It's all a matter of cultural framing - the belief that only women had sex with men, therefore, only feminised men would have sex with men. For you personally, for this generation, I want to emphasize that simply because you've been told all your lives that you are heterosexual does not mean that you have to be. You were never exposed to women except in pictures, until very recently; therefore, you haven't had a chance to make more than an intellectual decision one way or the other."

She shrugged. "Some of you are probably homosexual, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you love men more than women, we aren't going to ask you to give up your current lovers for someone else of the opposite gender. You will have opportunities to meet women, to talk to them, and to arrange for later contact in private, if you both so desire. You have the chance to try, and if you decide you aren't interested, you can stand down, no penalty."

"However," she continued, "there is certainly not going to be anything like the Kaled traditional monogamous pairings - unless half or more of you decide you are, in fact, homosexual. There simply aren't enough women."

"Is all this really important?" said Commander Nyder dryly.

"There was a time when your sexual orientation was more important that whether you were left-handed or right-handed," she replied.

Feet shuffled in the audience. A militarised society did not have slack for accommodating people who did not fit the standard mould; prospective soldiers had been forcibly retrained to be right-handed as children, with varying results. Even now, 'lefter' was a potent curse word.

"If there aren't enough women, can't you make more Daughters?" blustered one of the men. The others murmured: that was true too, that the Daughters were not born, but rather grown or made. That was probably why they all looked so much alike.

"It would be possible for the Daughters to create adult women using the support vats, but what are they going to eat? We're already running everything organic we can through the food processing plants, including vintage leftover uniforms and warehouses full of wood furniture. Bluntly, if we make a woman for every man right now, we'll all starve to death. In five years, maybe. Depends on how the bioforming of the Wastelands goes."

She held her two gloved hands in the air, and counted off numbers on her fingers. "Right now there are ten boy babies for every girl in the nurseries. And ten male children for every female child. It was when they became young men and women, with the men going into the battlefield and the women going into the Quarters that the ratio changed, as the men started to die off. War is a lot more dangerous than childbirth. So our resources are being allocated to creating little girl-babies first, quite normal babies, not like us," she touched her head, "to be raised alongside your boys. And as a stopgap, we're building a generation of ten-year-old girls who will be Daughters like us, to pair off with the boys who are that age now, but have not yet had their ranks thinned."

"How can we tell if a woman is normal or - or one of you?" was a stuttering question from the back.

"One of you meaning a Daughter of Skaro. Well, there's the face, and the metal plates in our skull are a bit of a giveaway. And we've all started to wear earrings." She brushed her hair back, and showed one of the flat round implants just behind her hairline, and a little silver ring clinging to the skin of her earlobe somehow.

"How do those ear-rings stay on?" asked Nyder, of all people. "Magnets?"

"No, we pierced our ears." She looked at their expressions of incomprehension, and explained. "You use a needle, stick a hole through the earlobe, let it heal, and you have a permanent place to put the earring pin. It doesn't hurt after it's healed." A murmur of dismay came from the men at this explanation.

"Disgusting," said Nyder, speaking for them all for a change.

She shrugged. "If this was two thousand years ago, Commander, your rank would be marked with a lovely gem-encrusted bar through your-"

"Go on with the lecture, if you please," he interrupted coolly.

"So. There are some preparations for meeting women that you will need to do in advance. We'll be adding contraceptive pills to the general stores; the manufacturing section has recreated several vintage formulae that will work. They are perfectly safe, but they do take several days to reach full effect. It is expected, gentlemen, that you will take your sperm-dissemblers consistently and honestly before you start any physical experimentation. Fortunately, the various inoculations necessary to fight germ warfare attacks seem to have wiped out all the sexually transmitted diseases."

A hand went up. "What's a sexually transmitted disease - and what's a sperm?"

Esselle's face fell. Then she carefully placed both gloved hands over her face, as though trying to hold it on. Behind her hands, her voice was a bit muffled as she said, "I could throttle your so-called teachers."

She took her hands off her face, and heaved a deep sigh. "A sexually transmitted disease was a virus that was spread specifically through sexual contact between people, due to mucous membrane friction and mingling of body fluids. These diseases caused sores, nerve dysfunction, sterility, even death. However, the war inoculations, the Bunker medical screening program and the Women's Quarters health regimen makes it certain that none of you, male or female, have any such diseases now. As for the second question - I hope you all know what semen is?"

General sounds of agreement.

"Fine. Semen is full of microscopic cells called sperm. They look like pond-wigglers, with little oval heads and long tails like whips, and they swim. No, really!" she protested, to the rising sniggers. "When a man and a woman have sexual intercourse, he ejaculates his semen into her vagina. Each ejaculation contains millions of sperm cells. And the sperm swim along in there, until they find an egg - if she happens to have one ready as well."

"Does she have millions of eggs in there?" one of the men said, probably picturing a woman bubbling over with babies.

"No actually, only a few thousand, and only one or two are available for the sperm to fertilise at once. Anyway, one sperm reaches the egg and enters it, and the egg thickens its outer layer so that no other sperm can get in. The sperm has half of your genes, and the egg has half of her genes. So they merge, and start to grow, drawing nutrients from the mother's body. And nine months later, she gives birth."

Esselle wiped a bit of sweat from her brow. "Now, a sperm dissembler. All it does is make it so that the head of your sperm don't have functional tails. You'll still produce just as many sperm, they just can't swim anywhere. And you can still ejaculate as much and as often as you please. The women are getting a contraceptive that will make their eggs have thick walls for as long as they take it, so no sperm can wriggle in."

She looked around the room. "Are there any more questions about sperm and eggs? No? Good. You all know that Kaled women have been kept in the Women's Quarters. There they bore children after being fertilized via artificial insemination - meaning a machine placed banked sperm inside their bodies. In order to keep them from trying to escape the Quarters, they were lengthily drilled in the perils waiting for them outside." She pointed out at the men in the audience. "And those perils included you."

The chuckles that came from that were drowned out by her next words. "They have been taught that all Kaled soldiers are sadistic, bloodthirsty monsters. That their genitalia are used only as a weapon, to rip and tear and inflict as much pain as possible. That they revel in torturing, maiming and killing anyone they can lay their hands on. That if any woman ever left the Quarters, they would be captured and torn apart by - you."

The bulk of the audience, far from laughing at this, was all eyes and open mouths. Women were - they were precious, they were the future of the race, so far as anyone was concerned. No sane man would think like that!

"So. Kaled women think Kaled men are dangerous beasts. And Kaled men think Kaled women are - mysteries. Let's consider their mysteries in a bit more depth." She touched a control on the desk in front of her, and the vidscreen lit up with a picture of a woman.

A naked woman. She was sitting on some draped chair; she had long black hair and pale skin. And she was naked. Her arms were at her sides, supporting her as she leaned back a little bit and showed them - everything. The curves of her, the way her waist swooped in, the long lines of her legs, the shape of her face, the swell of her breasts, the dense mysterious hair between her legs - everything, you could see everything.

Of course they had seen women in pictures, old ones: fragments from magazines, browned drawings from books, carefully stored and handed down from soldier to soldier. There was even a man in the Bunker who traded favours for the privilege of borrowing from his private collection. But this was - so much bigger. And brighter. And realer. Right there, right where you could see…everything.

"You must forgive me for not putting this picture up first," murmured Esselle, "but I needed you to pay attention."

Her answer was dead silence.

"Pay attention?" she inquired, and met Nyder's eyes; he was looking at her instead of the vidscreen, and with a distinctly peeved expression. Now look what I have to do, his eyes said.

"Attention!" he shouted, and all of the men snapped back into reality.

"Thank you, Commander," she said. She touched the control again, and the picture changed. It was the same woman, but now she was smiling and blushing at the same time. Her cheeks glowed red, and her hands were covering her breasts; the contrast between those white hands and the pink blushing skin around them was enthralling. "Now look what you did. You've embarrassed her."

There was a flurry of chuckles and not a few blushing faces in the audience as well. And some of the men definitely had their hands planted a bit deeper in their pockets than strictly necessary.

"So. This nice young lady is going to show you all her - what did I call them? - her mysteries. I'll be using the medical terms for all the various bits; if you find those too dry, there's a full glossary of slang terms for the female and the male anatomy in the History of Sex. Some of them quite droll. Fur-pocket is cute. So is little-brush." She looked at her audience drolly. "Try not to use too many of the war-related ones. You might think calling your prick your 'entrenching tool' is hysterical, but some women would find it rather alarming."

"Now then." She switched back to the first picture. "Breasts: rather similar to your own. If somewhat larger on average. I wouldn't recommend squeezing them any harder than you'd squeeze yourself, on general principle."

Another picture, showing exactly what the men were most interested in.

"Female genitalia has several sections, rather like your prick and your pendants are two parts of the same system. Hair and skin colouration, and the respective sizes of the different parts, can vary widely. What you're looking at are the external labia, which as you can see are covered with hair."

"There isn't hair on the inside, is there?"

"No more than there is inside your mouth, Smett. Speaking of inside-" she changed the picture. The woman had opened her legs wider, spreading the two furry lips and revealing a baffling series of folds and nubbins and divots inside. It was nothing like a man, that was for certain.

"This," she turned and pointed, "at the top of the labia here, is the clitoris, which is very sensitive just like the head of your penis. And just like some of you like having your prick squeezed hard, and some just like having it stroked, and some like the lightest pressure, and stop looking at me like that," she snapped, as the men's jaws dropped in astonishment. "I'm not squeezing any of your pricks, it's from the Practical Applications section in the booklet, all right? 'Some of you' meaning men in general, not you specifically."

She frowned at the men, and then turned back to the screen. "Anyway. The clitoris should be treated with respect, and learning the different levels of stimulation that different women prefer will be a long and we should hope mutually pleasurable task. This is the urethra, she urinates from there. Not through the clitoris, mind you. Two separate systems. And she urinates sitting down, generally. These are the inner labia, running parallel to the outer ones. And here, gentlemen, is the vagina. Which is where your penis can be slid in once it's hard and she's wet - women can secrete lubricating fluids, and probably will once you've paid enough attention to the clitoris. The process of penile penetration is also called sexual intercourse, although the definition can be stretched to include any genital-to-genital stimulation."

She looked over her shoulder and grinned, "Sorry, but I just love saying 'process of penile penetration.' It rolls off the tongue so nicely." She waited for the snickering to die down. "Rather deep inside the vaginal canal is the uterus, where babies grow for nine months and are born, out through the vagina. And down here is her anus, which serves the same function as yours does."

She turned back to her audience. "Any questions?"

"We're supposed to ejaculate on that, and then the sperms swim inside?" one man asked, pointing to the screen.

"Well, the idea is you ejaculate inside of her, usually."

"Doesn't the, uh, the vaginal canal get all stretched out by babies?" It hardly seemed likely that a whole baby could fit out through that tiny place.

"Dilation is a natural part of the birthing process. This woman has had four children," Esselle said, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. "Maintaining vaginal muscle tone is very important for Kaled women: makes childbirth easier, for one thing. As you can see, the vagina does indeed shrink back to a normal scale afterwards."

"How do you know if she's, um, lubricated enough?"

"Ask. If she's interested but not wet enough, the gentle application of a tongue can help. So can cartridge grease - which for those of you who haven't noticed, is also a surgical grade body lubricant. It's good for more than cartridges," she said dryly.

"How can you tell if a woman's a virgin?"

Esselle looked at the questioner, askance. "They're all virgins, at least with regards to men."

"With men, meaning…?"

"Well, there are no men there for them to have contact with, sooo," she let the last word trail off.

"Oh. Oh! So you mean that women, um, have sexual intercourse with each other?" Those last two words were almost blurted out by the guard who had asked.

"Yes!" she said, no shouted. She even clapped her hands together once, her face alight: clearly she had been waiting for someone to ask this question. "Even though they don't have pricks, the women of the Quarters do indeed have sex with each other, for pretty much the same reasons you have sex with each other: to relieve tension, to pay debts, for pleasure, for love. And just as some of you are man-oriented, some of them are women-oriented." Her lower lip curled unpleasantly for a moment. "And as your orientation is being respected, so you will respect theirs. If she says she isn't interested and that she will never be interested, back off."

"How do you know all this?"

Esselle held up the 'History of Sex' booklet. "Research, research, research. Now, I've given you a lot of specific information up front, some of which you may not need to use for weeks or months. But you should have the knowledge you need for the role you are performing- or enough to know that this role is not for you. You all may know how to seduce other men, but women, as I have just shown you, are not men. For them, as for you, this is entirely new territory. You may be able to coax a woman into bed in an hour - or she may want to get to know you better over time. You may not fall in love at first, or you may fall in love with a woman who's already chosen another. It will probably be very painful for some of you, I'm sorry to say.

"I suppose," she sighed, " this is as bad a point as any to bring up the topic of forced sex. Under wartime law, rape was strictly defined as the sexual assault of a superior, rather than the original legal definition, which was any sexual contact involving one or more unwilling or non-consenting participants. We can thank, or perhaps curse, this man for the war definition," and she opened up the booklet and showed them a half-page illustration of a sour-faced man in an antique uniform. "General Solz, later Supremo Solz, must have been a remarkably bad lover. He introduced the laws that any soldier was entitled to take anyone below him in rank, and also any civilian not protected by law." Her voice dripped poison. "That is no longer the case."

Her hand swept out towards them again, fingers pointing like needles. "The Rollback has restored Kaled law to its pre-war state, and by that law it is illegal to force any man or woman, regardless of rank, with threat of violence or other coercion. Believe it or not, there actually have been returning soldiers who have been so deranged as to try to attack and rape women in the Dome. The Kaled Council has not yet decided on a suitable punishment for them-"

"Why not?" snapped one of the men hotly, his hands a little bit too tight on his knees.

"Because those men were torn apart by screaming mobs on the spot," she said flatly. "Hardly any point in punishing a corpse. This law does not apply to past abuses." She dared to actually glance at Nyder for a moment, and then away. "But we can prevent such abuses in the future."

Suddenly her dark eyes were sharp with rage. "And as for any boy-hunters, who prefer to prey on children, those activities were always illegal and there are going to be no exceptions made. Not for political connections, not for blackmail, not for anything."

"I can assure you, Security Liaison, that none of my men have such - appetites." Nyder always refused to call Esselle by name, and insisted on her full title.

"Understood. And appreciated, Commander." She seemed to relax a little in her chair. "Now, I have here a list of stupid questions, that have been asked by other men during other lessons. I thought we could wind down with them. First, do women piss out of their arses?"

A burst of laughter; the men sitting behind Nyder nudged each other with their elbows, to see the back of his neck flush.

"Well, I certainly don't," said Esselle over the noise, "and I've shown you where the urethra is, so you don't have to take my word on it. Do women bleed from their crotches once a month? Yes."

The men stopped laughing.

"But it's not quite blood, more like bloody tears. The shed lining of the uterus - not a lot of fluid, say half a cup or so, comes trickling out over the course of a few days."

"Does that mean they can't have sex for those days?" asked one of the men, wide-eyed.

"Not necessarily, just think of it as extra lubrication - though you might want to put down a towel. Next. You cannot get a woman pregnant by kissing her, pissing on her, eating from her plate, sleeping in her bed while she isn't there or bathing with her."

She dropped her chin and looked up at them through her eyebrows. "And no matter what, gentlemen, she is not going to make you pregnant. Popular folklore to the contrary."

"Let's see. Women's looks or touches or kisses do not turn men into their helpless slaves." She gave a small sigh, as though regretting that. "And if a homosexual man has sex with a woman, it will not magically make him heterosexual."

One of the men in the back put up his hand. His face was serious, and she waved the room to silence before gesturing for him to speak.

"Um. I knew a - story about a man who couldn't, well, perform unless he was holding a loaded gun to his head. Does that mean he was a, a heterosexual?" he said, carefully sounding out the unfamiliar word.

"Holding the gun to his partner's head?"

"No, he had to hold it to his own head, sorry. Loaded. With his finger on the trigger," he replied, with a wince.

"No, that's not a general characteristic of heterosexuality. What that is, is either a powerful compulsion, or a sexual fetish, that is to say, an intense and specific desire for an action or object that may or may not be sexual, but is necessary to achieve sexual release. If, ah, if you could tell me later the name of the man in that story, I can check to see if he is still alive and ask that he accept psych tech counselling."

He nodded in agreement.

"And if that is all, gentlemen, you can come up and take your copies of 'The Kaled History of Sex' with you to bed. Enjoy yourselves," and she smiled as the men scrambled to their feet and moved to the front. "There will be a test-"

Captain Tane stopped dead and raised one hand, and the men stopped behind him. "What's the test?" he challenged.

She blinked innocently. "Well, we are also distributing copies of this booklet in the Women's Quarters, and while they should understand most of the pictures and can pick their way through the alphabet, they are far from expert in written Kaled. So if they have any questions about some of the larger words, and they attend the Event, they will ask you. It will certainly give you something to talk to them about."

The men paused for a long moment, and then moved forward again; the appeal of the booklet was too much to resist. They picked their way around Nyder, who just sat there, watching them and watching her, watching them, measuring and judging them, always.

After the men had left, Commander Nyder was still sitting in his chair. He raised his chin, about to speak - and caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye.

It was Smett, who had taken a seat in the very back. He came slowly up to the front, and rather than take a magazine and leave, he turned to his Commander and asked, "May I speak to Esselle alone, just for a moment, sir?"

"No," said Nyder, and his attitude made it clear that this was not open for discussion. Esselle leaned forward and said, "We can talk later, if you like-"

"No. No, I should - I'm sorry. Esselle. I'm sorry for what we did. What we tried to do." He swallowed, hard. "I just - we didn't know how to ask…"

"Well, some of that falls squarely on Lonrie's shoulders," she said softly. "His initial approach, shall we say, was quite verbally abusive; apparently he thought if he beat me down enough I'd spread for him. Those were words, and as for your actions - as I recall you were punished just as hard for your actions as the other three." Lonrie was no longer in the Bunker; he was reported to have deserted. The others had returned to duty after their various broken bones and other contusions had healed.

Smett nodded, his face and neck flaming red with embarrassment.

"I've give you this much, though," she continued, "you're braver than the others. None of them have come up to me and apologised." She reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, making him jump. "Go on, get studying." She watched him with almost-fond eyes as he took the offered booklet and left a bit too quickly.


	2. Testing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obscene graffiti, fighting, and dance lessons.

After the room was empty, the Daughter stood and asked, "Satisfactory, sir?" Her hands neatly scooped up the remaining copies of the booklet.

"Adequate, Security Liaison," Nyder replied, rising and gesturing for her to follow him as he exited the room. He did not take a copy of 'The Kaled History of Sex'; he had insisted on pre-vetting the material, and already had a copy in his quarters. "This Event is going to cause a noticeable strain on Bunker discipline."

"Not if you tell the men that the only ones who get a pass to the Event are the ones who behave, sir."

"An interesting suggestion," he said, his face revealing nothing. Then it revealed something: frustration. "I am absolutely dreading this Event. Disturbing the schedule for weeks, just for frivolous entertainment. Now that the technology and the support vats are available for creating the next generation, there's no reason for this social intercourse."

"Davros wants to attend," said Security Liaison from behind him.

Nyder's body felt like a plucked bowstring for a moment, humming with sudden tension. His footsteps faltered. "He will not!" he said, his eyes too wide as he finally stopped and turned.

She looked up at him gravely. "It should be possible to keep him completely covered throughout. If you send a squad of Daleks along with him, and have them form a perimeter to supplement your own men, he will be extremely well defended. And if he decides he wants to dance, the Daleks can - you know, mill around two by two. Pretend that they're dancing."

"Dancing Daleks." Nyder's voice was frighteningly bland.

"And of course Security can dance as well, they need to be right on hand to frisk anyone who wants to dance with Davros."

"Davros cannot go out, in public, where anyone could assassinate him! And he can't go dancing!" Nyder almost hissed. Davros was still the Supreme Commander, and while many might speak of him adoringly as the man who ended the war, surely there must be others who hated and feared him, who would strike at him for revenge or jealousy or out of madness. What was the point of Davros putting his mind into a whole body, if he used his new legs to march himself right into the path of danger…

"And you will need to get the thinnest protective gear out of the armoury, and make sure it's in perfect condition," she went on, obliviously.

"Why?" The body armour would protect him against blasts and bullets, but-

"Because Davros says he wants to go dancing. And what Davros wants, Davros gets. And the best way to make sure that he's protected, Commander, is for him to have someone to stand between him and all harm."

Nyder's mouth fell open a bare fraction and immediately snapped shut.

"So, Commander. I hope you know the basics, because you're going to be Davros' dance partner. You, and a carefully selected string of young ladies and men. Very carefully selected, scanned by the Daleks, frisked by your men, and then they can just cut in for a few steps and then you can take Davros back." She looked at him, and actually sighed.

"Some men have all the luck," she remarked to thin air.

 

* * *

 

The personnel quarters were, to put it mildly, lively that night. The Security men had been exposed to a whole new world of arousing concepts, and had in their hands probably the most graphic pornographic material any of them had seen in their lives. And they had no reserve and high hopes for the future.

Those who had steady partners took them; others took on all comers. Some just curled up in their bunks, with a container of cartridge grease close at hand, and enjoyed themselves. And when they finally fell asleep, their dreams were very vivid. One man, almost literally drunk on words and pictures, stripped off and stood in the middle of the common area, wringing himself with both hands while he spewed out a completely improvised but remarkably vivid and memorable speech on what he would do to every woman on the planet when he got the chance. His words earned him applause from those whose hands were not busy, and cheers from those whose mouths were not otherwise occupied.

(That speech took on a life as its own, as it happens. Many years later, when that man was old and grey, he would sit and read his own words, part of a published collection of Early Post-War Poets, and smile, wondering if anyone else reading this book and these words pictured him young and virile and clad only in his boots and a thin layer of grease, rampant with passion, flush with words.

He certainly hoped so.)

 

* * *

 

In his private quarters, Nyder looked over the coloured pictures, and wondered.

What was he? If he had to think about it, he supposed he would put himself down as homosexual. Or maybe asexual: he generally only wanted sex when he was particularly frustrated or angry. For him it was just a way to relieve himself. It had nothing more to do with love or desire than pissing.

He leafed through the magazine slowly, stopping at one page and then another. While there were plenty of pictures and drawings of women, there were just as many of men. But none of them really appealed to him. Round breasts, firm legs, tight muscles under hairy skin, flashing bright smiles, men or women, it just looked like so much meat to him.

Irritably he put the magazine aside and prepared for bed. If he had strange dreams that night, he did not remember them.

 

* * *

 

One of the more interesting results of the Sexual Basics lesson was a lengthy screed on the theoretical activities of the Commander and his assistant, scrawled on a Bunker lavatory wall early one morning. Security Liaison found it first, and was standing in front of it, tapping a red pen on her lips when Nyder entered.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"Where did you think I really pissed, the closet?" she asked absently, still reading the graffiti. "Commander," she added, watching Nyder's bristling approach.

Nyder read the entire graffiti - it took up nearly two-thirds of the wall - and asked, "Well?"

He meant, did she know who had written it. But her reply did not touch on that.

"Well, this," she underlined one section with brisk strokes, "is simply anatomically impossible." More markings with the red pen. "And that's redundant, it says the same in the fifth sentence."

"They misspelled orgasm," Nyder noted.

"Also flatulence - really, what sort of nonsense are they teaching the Elite these days?" Security Liaison sniffed. "As for the author, I think this is a collaborative effort - they probably worked it out amongst themselves, then one brave soul came to write it down."

"We shall see how brave they are." Nyder leaned over as she added her last corrections to the bottom of the graffiti ('verb tense shifts here') and asked, "And the authors are?"

She looked at the words, judged the phrasing and diction, and came up with three names.

"Add a note to the end that they are to meet me in my office - no. One today, one tomorrow, and one the next day. Last period. Block off - an hour for each. See to it."

 

* * *

 

"Davros," said Nyder later that same day, throwing the Supreme Commander to the floor and kneeling on his chest. "I feel your attending this Event is-"

Davros swept up a knee and knocked Nyder forward; his elbow would have landed squarely on Nyder's temple, were it not for the padded helmet he was wearing. Nyder rolled off and to his feet, continuing his sentence, "-an unnecessary hazard." Davros had snapped himself upright as well, and the two men stood face-to-face, slightly crouched, ready to attack.

Nyder had chosen to discuss his concerns with Davros during their twice-weekly unarmed combat lessons. They would be alone then, in one of the exercise rooms.

"Nyder, I have absolute faith in your ability to protect me," said Davros, feinting forward half a step and then back, trying to draw Nyder out of his stance. "I have been apart from my people for too long."

"Then you should stay in the Bunker with the Daleks, it's the only place where you are really safe. You made the Daleks, after all. They can be controlled, you can predict exactly what they will do. People are - Kaleds are different." Nyder's eyes were narrow behind the helmet's bars.

"Some things cannot be predicted, Nyder." Davros' hand slipped into his sleeve and came out clutching a gun, and without a thought Nyder took him down.

Davros was down, on his face, the wet sound of wrenched cartilage simultaneous with the sound of his body slapping against the mats, and Nyder was over him, holding him down, twisting the gun free and-

"Pen, it's a pen!" shouted Davros against the mats.

Nyder stopped, and then deliberately pinned Davros' shoulders to the mat with his own weight, and examined the gun. Which was in fact a pen, one of the short thick markers used to write on the laboratory whiteboards. It had looked just like the barrel of a gun for a crucial second.

"What were you thinking!" Nyder snapped, furious and frightened. He'd reacted totally on instinct when he'd seen a weapon. He had only dislocated Davros' thumb, but it could have been his shoulder - or worse

"I wanted to see what would happen," said Davros haughtily. "Now, if you would get off me, I need to get this hand-"

"I'll do it," said Nyder, taking Davros' hand in a firm grip, preparing to relocate the thumb that he had cruelly twisted while getting the pen away from Davros.

"No, get the medical team, I-" and Davros shouted, in anger and pain, as his thumb was pulled and twisted and set back into place."

"The longer you wait with a dislocation, the more it swells and the more damage results," said Nyder, rising and taking off his helmet. "Lesson's over. Go get that wrapped up."

Davros sat up. "I could fight with-"

Nyder spoke, stressing each word like it was a slap to the face. "The lesson is over, Davros. This is unarmed combat, not surprise-it's-a-gun combat. I could have killed you, do you know that?" Nyder was shaking inside. "I could have snapped your neck and I'd be hauling you down to the medical wing now, hoping they could keep your brain oxygenated long enough for some chance at survival."

Davros paused; he had not realised how much his little test was going to upset Nyder. "Was I that much out of line, Commander?" He crossed his legs, sitting at ease on the floor.

"Absolutely," Nyder said flatly, his mouth a hard white line. He rolled the pen between his fingers for a moment, wondering if Davros might have been writing on any walls with it - then he chucked it aside. Someone else could clean it up. Irritably he extended a hand to help Davros to his feet.

Davros took the hand and rose, and just stood there, staring at Nyder. He so rarely saw the flush of real emotion on his subordinate's face; it made him look completely different. Nyder stared back for only an instant, and then spun on his heel and left without another word.

Outside in the corridor, Nyder moved blindly towards the lockers, to change into his uniform. Then, for some reason, he reached under his collar and pulled out a tiny red six-sided metal tab. It was a passkey, and it would open any of the secret tunnels that had been bored throughout the Bunker complex by the Daughters. He normally wore it on one of his thin leather gloves; during combat practice he clipped it to his undershirt collar. There should be a tunnel right - right -

He was dragging the hand holding the passkey against the wall, and when the doorway opened he slipped inside. He pressed his shoulders and back against the stone wall of the narrow tunnel, hard, hard enough to put pressure on his knees. Invisible in the darkness, his face twisted in fear.

Davros was going to die.

Davros was going to die, he was going to go outside, out of the Bunker, among men who could be crazy or killers or assassins, and women who are completely unknown quantities. And there would be too many of them, a crowd of them, strangers, everywhere strangers. And one of them would get through, with a knife or a gun or a bomb. Davros would die right in front of the entire world, for every Kaled to see. And everyone would see Nyder's failure.

If that happens, he said to himself, nipping at his upper lip over and over again with his teeth, barely restraining himself from drawing blood, I will order the Daleks into the crowd. Tell them to exterminate everyone. Burn them all for him.

"Commander," said a woman's voice out of the dark. One of those women, of course.

"Leave me alone!" he hissed.

"I can lock the door to the corridor from here." A tiny clicking noise. "I'll stand here. Nobody will get past me."

That tone of voice - "Security Liaison?"

"Yes, sir. Davros asked me to come find you. He wants to review the security screening procedure for the Event attendees."

"Anyone will be able to walk in-"

"No, sir. All entrances and exits will be controlled, and Dome security will be searching and scanning the premises and the attendees with absolute fidelity. No man or woman is going to step into that room without a full dossier being known to us." Us being the Daughters of course. "Your concerns are understandable, and we will-"

"You will do as Davros asks, no matter how much he endangers himself." Nyder transferred his fury to these stupid Daughters, no, these Reflectionists. That was their real name. Alien thought-patterns in Kaled flesh, reproducing like maggots in a wound, gnawing out society from within - why could they not see the danger Davros was in. Why! What did they think they were doing, organising this Event!

"I understand if you are frightened. Do you think I'm not? Do you think that I never get frightened or angry or frustrated, because I'm one of the perfect, immaculate Daughters of Skaro!" Her voice was poisonously expressive. "But we will keep Davros safe, and we will help the two halves of your society become one flesh - as the saying goes."

He took off the heavy padded gloves he wore, baring his scarred hands as he would never do in the light, and reached for the sound of her voice. His left hand found and explored her face; she didn't seem to be wearing light-enhancing goggles.

"Who can see me?" he said. He imagined Reflectionists in the darkness, watching him, spying on him.

"Nobody."

He lashed out with both hands and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her forward, within striking range. She inhaled sharply, but there was no tensing of her muscles against his hands; no signs that she was trying to escape.

He stood there in the dark for a moment, wondering if he should give in to his urges. Urges that he knew well. But he restrained himself. Perhaps later he could hurt her, mark her where nobody would see.

He let go and whispered into her ear, "Out." Without a sound, she slid past him down the narrow tunnel, and outside.

 

* * *

 

The days leading up to the Event were stressful, as every Elite Security member desperately tried to prove that they were the best, most proactive, most prompt, most polished man imaginable. And having every guard trying to prove themselves at once meant that they were constantly underfoot. It was not until the day of the Event that Nyder managed to talk to Security Liaison about a matter that had been pressing on him.

"You look very well, Commander," she said, and meant it. He was wearing his sharpest dress uniform, with gleaming bullion-embroidered insignia. She really didn't have anything to dress up in, so she would wear her usual uniform, decorated only with a thread-thin red hexagon and a plain red armband.

"I require your assistance." Without further explanation, he turned and headed for the exercise area; without further questions, she followed.

He waited until they were both in one of the exercise rooms, with the soundproofed door locked, before he spoke.

"I am to accompany Davros to the Event. To stand at his side, to defend him, to blend in with - everything that happens."

"And?" Security Liaison asked.

Nyder pursed his mouth tight for a moment, and then spat out, "I can't dance."

"Can't as in injuries prevent, or can't as in don't know how?" she asked.

"I was not - I never learned." Nyder glared at her, as though to remind her that he had been raised Standard. He had not had the luxuries that the others here had enjoyed growing up, and that included dance lessons.

She held her hands up, fingers a little curled. "Believe me Commander, most of your men have had one two-hour dance lesson when they were twelve and none since." She turned her face away a little, looked at him a bit aside. "Didn't the men dance when you-"

"Not with me," Nyder said flatly. He had not joined in the frankly erotic dances that the field soldiers had shared in stolen moments and gutted buildings.

"Well Commander, if you can fight, and walk, then you can dance. It's just a little bit of both." She stepped closer to him, but was careful to keep both hands in view. You always had to be careful, with Nyder. "Close order combat, you keep your feet away from your opponent's, correct? So he can't trip you."

"Correct."

"Fine. Put the backs of your hands to mine," he did so, "and then raise them up, so that our elbows touch." This left them standing with their arms forming an odd bracket between them. "That's it."

"What do you mean, that's it?" Nyder frowned, his face interestingly framed by their arms.

"I mean, this is the classic formal dance position. It's so old that both men and women know it, so old that Davros will know it - or at least have seen it. And all you have to do is keep your elbows touching. Pretend that it's combat, that you're matching someone's moves in a fight, and you should do fine." She moved to one side, and Nyder moved with her, with the quick sidestep of a fighter.

"Very smooth sir," she said.

"I don't need your flattery."

"As you say. Now, side to side is easier to follow, but if one person backs up, you also have to follow." She led Nyder on a series of left-right-back-back-forward movements, and he followed her fairly well.

"Who decides which way to move?" he asked, grimly concentrating on keeping his elbows touching hers. The constant light pressure was nothing like combat.

"In your case, Davros."

"Granted. And do I have to keep my hands in the air like this?"

"Oh no," she said with a flicker of what might almost be a smile. "You can fold them back against your own arms and just touch elbows - although that's generally considered rather standoffish. You can clasp hands, you can even move your hands under your partner's arms so that only the sides of your elbows touch." She demonstrated the last, and felt the muscles of his arm recoil at her touch; in a flash he twisted his own arms around and over hers, and was grasping her by the upper arms.

"Rather forward, don't you think?" she said coolly, and he jerked his forearms back into the air, concentrating again as she added some turning of her upper body and swaying of her arms to the pattern of motion.

"This isn't anything like I thought dancing would be," he muttered.

"Why?"

"I watched a film once, 'The Azure Findings.' There was dancing in that, but it was very intricate, everyone interweaving and moving their arms like - like burning insects."

"That's a banned film. I'm surprised you would watch it." Of course the Commander would be able to request anything from the sealed archives, but she hadn't thought he would have any interest in such things.

"I was curious. In hindsight, I wasn't very impressed as to the calibre of items the Kaled government chose to suppress." He was moving more smoothly with his unwanted teacher now, and after a few more passes, found the spare thought to ask, "I suppose you know why it was banned?" The Daughters knew everything, it seemed. For good reason, since they could move memories from mind to mind using their brain implants: what one knew, all knew.

"Hmm?" She stared into space for a moment, distracted, but still managed to follow when he pulled his elbows to one side and bent. "Do you remember the supporting female actress? Very dark hair, character named Aris?"

"Yes."

"She was a Thal."

Nyder jerked his elbows outward, and Security Liaison reflexively followed; she found herself standing face to face with the Commander. "She was not!" he said, tendons thrumming in his neck.

"Not the character I mean, the actress herself. She was raised in Kaled territory, but definitely a Thal, genetically. It was a great scandal at the time, all of the films with her in them were suppressed." She sighed. "And then they suppressed all of them, so as not to give the soldiers unrealistic expectations. Sad." She sighed again through her nose.

Nyder stepped completely away, pulling his arms back and making it clear that she was not to follow. "Do you consider this an adequate lesson?"

"Hmm, a few more tips if you can spare the time. If someone comes up and wants to dance with your partner, you can either step aside entire, or just draw aside one arm and that person touches one elbow to yours, and one to your partner's. At that point you shouldn't worry about footwork, you can just sort of stand there and sway. If someone stands between you and your partner to dance - cutting in, in other words - you may stand behind them and put your hands on their elbows, and dance that way. And try not to step on Davros' new feet too much, he's dreadfully proud of them."

"Thank you, that will be all." Nyder left, and behind him Security Liaison gave a beaming smile to nothing, and hugged herself. Indulging herself in a quick burst of emotion. She couldn't wait to see what happened next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea if the classic Kaled dance position is related to the 'elbow sex' dance moment from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. No idea whatsoever (whistles casually)


	3. Review

Before the Event departure, Nyder had his men line up. He went over them, with sharp eyes and caustic words, and revoked two passes on the spot for, respectively, lack of dress gloves and a poor job of shaving. The two dismissed men left, and Nyder went over his orders one last time, his words poundingly urgent, drilling into each individual man that they were not, absolutely not, to waver from their focus on Davros for an instant. That he was to be guarded and protected at all times, bar any distractions. No matter how beguiling the distractions might be.

Chief Scientist Gharman was waiting to one side in his own black dress uniform, looking glad to be out of the line of fire. A Dalek was watching as well; it was probably relaying everything he said to its fellow Daleks. When Nyder was done, it turned and stared with its eyestalk - not at Nyder, but at the woman standing half-hidden behind him.

"You will explain this Event to me," it droned.

Esselle glanced at Nyder, and then answered. "The Kaled males are going to attempt to review and revive pair-bonding and courtship rituals with Kaled females, for reasons of emotional pleasure and potential sexual reproduction." She paused, as though waiting for a reaction, and then offered, "There will be music too."

"We are to protect Davros."

"Correct, Dalek unit."

"We obey."

"That Dalek can't fit on the train," Nyder pointed out. The train was designed for sitting, and Daleks could not sit.

"No, it's going, or rather they are going, to slide along behind."

Once Nyder had raked the men over the hot coals of his eyes one last time, he left without another word. Captain Tane, who was by default the ranking officer, glanced at Esselle.

"For security reasons, Nyder insisted on personally escorting Davros in a separate car," she said flatly. "We'll meet them at the Event." She leaned forward, and said only for his ears, "Just wait till you see what Davros is wearing. It's - distinctive."

"Good. It will make it easier to keep track of him," said Tane, ordering his men to board the tiny self-propelled train, more a set of open wheeled carts than an enclosed vehicle, that would take them to the Dome.

Once all the men were aboard, and the train moved into the tunnel, a neat row of Daleks assembled on the tracks and trailed behind it, packed tightly enough on alternating rails that their sensory spheres touched. Their communication lights were flickering non-stop, even though they were not audibly talking; presumably they were communicating with each other over radio frequencies. There was a dark shape in the middle of the Dalek line. Davros' car, and two dark figures on it.

Tane wondered what the Daleks were talking about, and then pushed the thought aside.

"Will any of our, ah, mothers be there?" asked one of the men, turning in his seat. His tongue hesitated on the unfamiliar word.

"Possibly. You'll have to refer to your Parentage sheet. And there may be half-sisters of yours as well."

"At least one," said Gharman, seated behind Esselle.

"Ah yes, Dynna." Esselle turned and dropped one elbow over the back of her seat; loose tendrils of her hair flicked backwards in the breeze of their passage. "Were you surprised to discover that your sister had risen as high in position as you had, but in the Quarters?"

"I - no, actually. I never considered that," said Gharman, his voice rumbling a bit. "I was just shocked to find out that I had a sister."

"I hope this is worth it." Esselle held her hands out in front of her and shook them briskly, as though flinging off water drops. "I spent hours yesterday slapping a Dalek, and my fingers are killing me."

Tane looked at her and tried to figure out what she was talking about. Since he and all the other men had been poring over the 'History of Sex', his thoughts almost automatically took a lascivious turn. "Is slapping a Dalek some term for, for…." He couldn't think of the medical term. It was in the book, but-

She laughed, a clear sharp laugh that echoed off the tunnel's ceiling. "You mean masturbation? No, Tane. An actual Dalek, being slapped by my hand. To demonstrate torque, speed, and possible damage that could be inflicted if some Kaled woman decides to slap Davros."

Tane considered that chain of events. Woman slaps Davros, Dalek burns woman to a crisp, and from there on every scenario was a bad one. "Why would," he corrected himself, "how could any woman dare to slap Davros?"

"Well, we've asked them not to, but Davros can be - very direct with what he wants. And these women just are completely unused to being wanted by men. They might panic. I hope I have shown the Daleks that a slap will only hurt Davros' feelings." She stared off into the darkness, and then light suddenly washed over them.

The rail line terminal appeared to the left, a tiny room with enamelled white tiles. Some of the tiles were broken, pocked as though by bullets. But the tunnel kept going past it, through a fresh-looking hole in the wall, and so did the train.

"What is this, Liaison?" Tane said dangerously. His voice echoed flatly off the tunnel walls as they rushed past.

"We thought that having the rail line extended beneath the Dome would be useful - we just extended it today." With matter disintegrators, presumably. "So any assassins waiting for you to enter the Event via the Dome are going to be disappointed."

There were a few more minutes of motion; Tane could almost sense the men getting tenser, and more excited, by the way their whispers faded finally into silence. Then there was light, a new platform, and a set of narrow stone stairs leading upwards. Splashed on the opposing tunnel wall was a painted red hexagon.

"Last stop. Time to put on your best manners, gentlemen," she said, leaping off the train. The men followed, and the Daleks as well; at least some of them. Tane looked backwards, but could only see the dim shapes of Davros and Nyder in the tunnel still surrounded by Daleks, and hear them arguing about something. Was Nyder making one last effort to prevent Davros from attending?

Tane looked back, up the stairs. He wouldn't keep Tane from attending. He went up; behind him the Daleks filed away towards a ramp. The stairs were too narrow for their conical bodies, even with levipropulsion.

The stairs surfaced in a long narrow white room with the typical Dome look, walls and floor dull with a thousand years of washing and re-painting. Not typical were the heavily padded chairs along one wall, rich with embroidery. Or the faint sounds in the air that could almost be muffled music, playing nearly. One of the Daughters was waiting for them, with a beaming smile on her face and tiny silver rings in her ears. Like all the Daughters she was young, dark-haired and dark-eyed with a noticeably sharp nose and broad hips. She was wearing a long white robe with a series of vests or slings over it to support her body, and a broad red sash wrapped around her waist.

"I am Social Coordinator called Socca," she introduced herself. "My, aren't you all handsome!" And she looked at them with something in her eyes that made their hearts leap and their hands sweat. That look told them, each and every one, that they were handsome, were desirable - and were desired. Without further prompting, they all stood just a little bit straighter, insignia glittering.

Socca's eyes looked past them, and narrowed. "Security Liaison. And the Daleks, of course."

Tane looked back and flinched; the Daleks were pouring into the room, and walking in their midst was Esselle, with two silver cables leading from the implants in her head to the Daleks beside her. The three of them moved as one unit, or like a spinner-insect and the prey in its web.

"We are here," said all the Daleks in unison. Horribly, Esselle's mouth moved with the sound of their voices speaking in unison. Now the cables seemed like puppeteer's wires, and she some Kaled toy controlled by the machines around her. "We defend. We observe."

"Excellent," said Socca, in a tone that suggested nothing of the sort. Then her face brightened. "And our guest of honour."

Nyder came out of the stairwell first, his hand on his weapon and his eyes raking the room. He waited a long breath in the doorway, before stepping inside. And Davros walked in after him.

There was a long uncertain pause from everyone.

"That is a beautiful suit, Davros," said Socca with every appearance of sincerity.

"Isn't it, though." Davros smiled thinly, and strolled past the Elite, with Nyder as his anxious shadow. This let all of the Elite look over Davros' attire, which was completely unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was not a uniform, and it was not laboratory wear. It wasn't civilian wear or formal robes. And it wasn't pyjamas. It was completely different.

It was blue, not the standard blue of an army uniform, but a darker, midnight blue. It was in two pieces, a long-sleeved jacket and matching pants. And traced over it were very subtle black lines, up the arms and legs to make the wearer look taller, subtly outlining Davros' chest and torso. The neckline was set back a bit, curling up at the edge but not into a collar. Underneath he was not wearing body armour - presumably Nyder had lost that argument - but instead a black shirt with faint grey patterns twining over it, echoing the lines on the suit.

It was very sharp, Tane had to admit. The blue and black set off Davros' pale skin and dark hair. He'd never realised what a handsome neck his Supreme Commander had; you always saw him in a high-zippered laboratory tunic. And of course, before his regeneration, rebirth, whatever you wanted to call it, what was left alive of Davros was nothing to admire, physically.

Socca had completed her formal greetings to Davros, and now she addressed all the men.

"Gentlemen of the Elite, welcome to the Sixth Socialisation Event. An orientation is in order. This is the men's entrance; this room is strictly off-limits to all women. There's a door through there into the Dome proper, and it's guarded. Anyone stepping through those doors is scrutinised by five different overlapping scanning and surveillance systems. If a woman is harassing you, or if you just need a break, you can come in here. The lavatory is against that wall. And the same on the other side of the Event room: if a woman steps into her entrance, you are not to follow."

"And if we do?" said one of the guards, cheekily.

"Then we'll dart you to sleep, thrash you bloody and send you back to the Bunker in a sack." Her warming gaze was suddenly cold, and her hand pulled a tiny dart thrower out from under her sash. "The actions you take here, and in places like this, could determine the course of the rest of your life. And other people's lives as well. You may mess it up for yourselves, but you are not going to mess it up for any other men or women, is that clear? There have been no rapes in this place, this hall, and there are not going to be any."

The cheeky guard cringed, not daring to look at Nyder. Esselle stepped forward and touched her head to Socca's in a familiar gesture. All the Daughters did this; they exchanged information directly through their metal implants this way, or so they said. Socca's eyelids closed and twitched, and when her eyes opened again they were strangely sad. She softly kissed Esselle on the cheek before moving away.

"And gentlemen? If I find any graffiti in here, I'll assign the author to clean it off with both hands tied behind his back." Socca's tone was considerably sweeter than her words.

Esselle turned to the men and spoke, her eyes touching each of them in turn before settling on Davros and Nyder. "You will be a credit to the Security Elite, and to your Commanders. I have faith in you."

The doors opened and they all went through, heads high. Nyder and Esselle flanked Davros, with Daleks before and behind them, and entered last.

 

* * *

 

The Event room was very large; scars on the floor suggested that it had been part of a heavy equipment facility before the machines were unbolted and taken away. Now it was all one large rectangular room, still painted a rather flat grey. The Elite had entered on one long side; the far side was covered by a heavy unmoving black curtain, ceiling to floor. There were more chairs here along the wall, and long soft couches, and little tables perfectly sized for two people to talk across.

The room was unforgivably drab, if you looked at it just as a room. Worn and old, a bit shabby around the corners. But to the men who entered it, it was touched by mystery. This was the place where they would meet women, real Kaled women from the Women's Quarters, for possibly the first time in their lives.

There were other men already in the room: soldiers whose uniforms dripped with honours, sharp-eyed Dome bureaucrats. All of them looked a bit crestfallen at the entry of the sleek Elite guards, and puzzled at the appearance of the Daleks. Their expressions when Davros and Nyder entered were - unique. Delight, surprise, awe. Plus horror, frustration, and shock. They subtly backed away, letting the Elite choose their own space.

The Daleks spread out in a grid formation, positioning themselves. Their eyestalks and domes moved in a regular pattern, scanning the room. The Elite men did not; instead they showed a distinct tendency to wait by the door, loosely clumped around Davros. There were no women in sight, except for a few Daughters standing behind a table along the wall. There was a low platform set up at one end of the room, bearing equipment of some sort; the music seemed to be coming from there.

Nyder broke free of the clump of men and moved to the centre of the room. His eyes scanned the walls, the ceiling, the other men, the furniture, and his own men. Again and again they flicked back to Davros, checking his position.

"You are absolutely certain that all areas around this one are secured?" he said.

"Yes, Commander," answered Socca, following him obediently. "Two levels above and below were evacuated, scanned, searched, and are now secured. Nobody will be attacking from those directions."

"How long is this Event going to last?" Nyder's eyes could not keep still; they flickered over the room, the men, then the room again, almost desperately. Looking for any reason, the slightest excuse, for calling all this off and getting Davros out of here.

"Until your order for it to end."

"Until my order?" Nyder turned and frowned, that order already on the tip of his tongue.

"Of course if you end it now, the men will be very disappointed. And so will Davros."

Nyder looked at her, and said after a long angry breath, "I see."

 

* * *

 

Davros was standing with his back against the wall, literally. His expression was cool, and only Esselle noticed that his fists were clenched tight at his sides.

"Are you all right, sir?" she asked quietly.

"What? Of course. But I haven't been in a room this big since the dedication of the Memorial Hall." The vast empty space above and in front of him, so different from the tight enclosed corridors of the Bunker and the Dome, made him nervous in some non-logical way. And he hated being illogical.

A Dalek approached, its eyestalk focussed on its creator. "Davros," it said, "I would speak to you."

"Of course." Cordially Davros moved with the Dalek towards the open area, away from the other men. He was safe, he told himself. After all, there was a Dalek right here. He was perfectly safe.

"Where did Davros get that suit?" Tane murmured to Esselle, who was standing beside him.

She answered just as quietly, "A museum, of course. It's not bulletproof, unfortunately, but it will turn a knife. Let's hope it doesn't have to." She pointed with her chin, and Tane turned to talk to one of the soldiers who had approached; they fell into conversation. Most of the Elite men were talking with the other guests now, sitting or standing, and a few of them even dared to take to the dance area.

Out on the floor, Davros had a bit of a quandary. Was he supposed to pretend to actually be dancing with the Dalek? It didn't have any elbows to touch to his. But instead it spoke.

"Davros. We have experiments to perform, tests involving large-scale radiation output and its effect on Dalek organic components."

"Excellent." Davros actually brushed his palms together, once, in an abbreviated rubbing of hands. "I would be delighted to oversee-"

"No," the Dalek interrupted. "The experiments will release massive quantities of radiation. Even with the particle fountains and gene cleansing, any Kaled present would be fatally contaminated. We will perform the experiments outside of the Bunker."

"Outside?"

"Dal, the original capital city, is unused. It has adequate installation space for our equipment. We will allow you to monitor remotely. We will display our results to you. But you must not be there, Davros."

The Dalek stared at its creator, trying to decipher what the little arrangements of muscles under the skin of his face meant. His 'expression' most closely matched the patterns for 'grief' and 'pride,' but the Dalek had no idea why such emotions would be combined.

 

* * *

 

Nyder was reviewing the refreshments.

There were trays of food pills, and tiny bowls of some preserved fruit matched by equally tiny spoons. The guests were mostly skipping the pills, apparently, for the novelty of the fruit. And there were three great bowls of liquid, with cups behind the table, and three smiling identical Daughters to ladle the stuff out. But it was the signs on the wall above the table that were drawing his disapproving stare.

DRINK, said one sign. DRINK + ALCOHOL, said the next (that bowl's liquid was a deep crimson), and the third sign, over the bowl of midnight blue, said DRINK ++.

"You are serving intoxicants?" Nyder asked. He was furious, but it barely showed in his voice or manner. All stimulants were forbidden, except for those used by doctors. The stories about alcohol were quite fanciful, though the single bitter burning mouthful he'd tasted once (produced in a long-term encampment out of field rations, as he recalled) had not driven him to madness or given him the ability to see through walls.

"Why not? This population was raised on drugs," and Nyder flinched, remembering the Tek-4 scandal. "At least we're making it voluntary." She dropped her chin and looked up at him through her lashes. "Alcohol is traditional at Kaled festivals, and we are honouring that tradition."

"I would have appreciated being informed of this," he said, leaning forward just a hair, and was flattered to see all three of the Daughters lean back.

"We are monitoring people's intake, Commander. If you want a drink, you have to stick out your tongue. There's dye in those," she indicated the red and blue bowls, "and if your mouth is too stained, we cut you off."

"Alcohol in the red bowl - and what is in the blue?" He sniffed, but couldn't smell anything, unless that faint sharp smell like disinfectant was alcohol.

"Plus plus is double-plus good - we haven't made a more formal name yet. A relaxant, a mild hypnotic - it's what the Dome Peace Celebrations were full of." Nyder blinked at that; he had briefly passed through that wild night of unrestrained revels, and remembered the dazed smiling faces.

The Daughter who had been speaking, the one tending the red alcoholic bowl, smiled. "And what for you, Commander?"

"Nothing," he said, about to turn away, and then freezing as he sensed rather than heard someone moving behind him.

The someone spoke. "Care to dance?"

Nyder turned on one heel, slowly, and looked at the man who had dared to ask that question. He realised that he knew the man, actually.

"Hent," he said. He was the Dome Security Chief, they had met several times. Nyder looked to Davros, confirming that he had a Dalek at his back, that he was safe. Then, not knowing what else to do, he offered an elbow, and Hent moved them out onto the floor.

Behind them, the Daughters silently made it clear to each other that they thought Nyder would be much better off for several doses of double-plus in him.

"I think I aged ten years when I found out that Davros would be attending," Hent said to Nyder quietly, too quietly for any of the other dancers to hear. He matched Nyder's motions with a certain stiff grace, suggesting recent practice of an unfamiliar skill.

"I suppose there will be some tedious speeches as some point." So far this had been a lot more low-key than Nyder had thought it would be. He had expected Councillors in their heavy robes to give speeches about Momentous Occasions and such.

"Actually, I don't believe that any Councillors were invited. Davros' attendance was kept very much a secret." Hent parted his elbows a bit, and leaned closer. "Which made things easier, believe me. If it had been known that Davros would be here, there would be a mob outside clamouring to get in and meet him. This is a lot more secure. And it certainly should make these Events more popular. We'll have to order someone to write up a report, or an article, and get it distributed."

He looked over Nyder's shoulder - easy enough, Hent was a head taller - and said, "And what do I have to do to have a woman assigned to me, I wonder?"

Nyder stiffened, and without thinking took the lead in their dance, moving Hent backwards with force of will and voice. "For starters, you have to be Davros' second in command. Care to try?"

Hent swallowed, held by Nyder's eyes, and the pressure of his forearms against his. "No - Commander."

"Good." Nyder had nearly driven Hent against the wall; now he relented his pressure, and they started turning and moving sideways. "Davros assigned her to me. I suppose you could ask the Daughters to assign you one."

"Oh, she's a Daughter? I didn't recognise - isn't she a bit on the short side?"

Nyder just looked up at him, and Hent took the hint.

"Strange. I guess that clothes really do make the woman, after all." He spoke in a more relaxed tone now. "This is the first mixed Event that I've attended; usually when the women show up here, the men leave. I wonder what will happen. Men and women together, dancing and everything."

"And everything." Then Nyder let his curiosity speak. "Why would the men leave? The chance to meet women, after all."

Hent shrugged; Nyder felt the motion through his arms. "Because women are different, that's why. Strangers, all of them. Their minds - they just don't think like us, I swear. Ah, and here they are."

"They?" Nyder turned his head, and his steps slowed to a halt.

The long curtain along the wall was moving, sliding away; of course it wasn't a wall at all, but a divider down the middle of one large room. The curtain was retracting into the wall, revealing what lay behind it. And what lay behind it, on the other side of the room, were chairs like here. And people. But not like here.

Women.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "That is a beautiful suit" - my misremembering of a line from 'Shibumi' by Trevanian, master of the snark novel.
> 
> Double-plus good - the obligatory 1984 joke. We should be glad they didn't call it soma.


	4. Exam

The other half of the room was full of women: more women than any of the men had seen in one place at once. The women were sitting and talking, and some of them were frozen in the middle of the floor, posed as though they had been dancing together. But the revelation of the men so close was enough to turn all of them into statues, it seemed. The automated music machines at the end of the hall set up a brisker beat, but it did not make any of them move.

Women. Their faces were strange, rounder and softer than men's. Of course with having to bear children, they always got the necessary calories. And their bodies were round as well. In fact, it was quite clear that a lot of them were pregnant.

The reaction from the men's side of the room was not to charge forward and invade this proffered new territory; it was in fact to retreat. Hent was one of those who retreated to the wall, leaving Nyder alone in the middle of the floor; he moved back (not retreated, certainly not that) to Davros' side. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Davros nudged him with his elbow.

"Commander, if you would be so kind?" he asked, and stiffly, tentatively, Nyder touched the back of his hands to Davros', and raised them up. It seemed to take forever to get their forearms together, but he managed the suddenly strangely difficult task (he thought) without Davros noticing anything awry. And they began to dance, Nyder painfully alert to his Commander's every motion. He supposed that it was no coincidence that the dance took them closer to the middle of the room.

"I wish the Lieutenant had lived to see this," muttered Tane to Kravos. "He'd swallow his boots, at a sight like that." Kravos nodded agreement. Davros and Nyder, dancing together, surrounded by a square of attentive Daleks. And past them, all those women, watching them dance.

Esselle came gliding across the floor - gliding spectacularly, she had planted her elbow into a Dalek's suction-cup (but left its gun free) and was moving as though dancing. Her steps sent her skipping over the floor, trying to keep up with the Dalek's rolling pace. "Congratulations are in order, Commanders," she said a little breathlessly. "Only three men ran out of the room, and they're waiting in the entrance room. We may yet lure them back."

"How many women backed out?" asked Davros, cynical as ever.

"Four, actually. With your permission, sirs, I should go get Councillor Dynna. Escort her over."

"Aren't the men supposed to go over there and invite the women over?" That was part of the Practical Applications section of the History of Sex - and Nyder suddenly grew paler than ever, realising that some of the women at the tables were indeed leafing through their copies of that very book. And they would look down at the book, and then up at him, and then down.

"I should do. I'm half a man, practically." Her gesture encompassed the black Elite uniform she was wearing.

"Which half, I wonder?" asked Nyder, with a snide edge to his voice. She stopped and looked back at them.

Something more than her looked back at them. More than the self-effacing, practically invisible assistant: it was Esselle plus something else, something unknown. Suddenly she had eyes like knives and a smile of total and utter control.

"The gentler half, my Commander," she purred, and turned away. Nyder kept his hands off his weapons and against Davros' by sheer will, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down his back under his armour.

Elegantly, Esselle strode across the invisible line that seemed to divide the room, went to a seated woman, and talked to her briefly. When they rose, it was arm in arm, and Esselle solemnly brought her forward. The Security men were in place, but as Nyder has instructed their frisking were confined to quick electronic scans, and as few touches as possible. The Daleks passed her as well. So in a few moments, she was there, her stolid face and grey-touched hair familiar from the vidscreen broadcasts.

"Councillor Dynna. Join me?" Davros invited, extending his elbow. Nyder did not panic, deliberately reminding himself that Dynna and Davros sat on the same Council, that she would have had previous opportunities to strike, and never had. But he was completely baffled for a moment as to - Esselle had gone over how three people danced, but -

Esselle saved him, touching her hand and elbow to his and twisting him through a half-circle, away from Davros; Dynna took his place. "Care to dance, Commander?" she asked.

"No," he snapped and rudely stepped away, going to check on the men who had fled the room. Esselle looked after him, and then at the women: one of the seated groups gestured to her, and she went over and had a whispered conversation.

When she turned back, she had a very strange expression on her face. She went back across the room and the men subtly shifted away. They had all seen her take Dynna over to this side, so now she might be looking to take one of them over there. They would rather have crossed No Man's Land naked, or jumped on a varga plant, then go over there and confront those - women. Not in front of everyone.

She moved past all the tall, handsome Elite and chose Smett: short, balding, and totally undistinguished. She took his arm, not with some symbolic dance-touch but simply grabbed him.

"Smett," said Esselle, steering him across the floor by one elbow, "you're quite a nice chap when someone else isn't manipulating you into doing something illegal so that you can take the blame for it. I'm certain that you can sit down right here and answer these nice ladies' questions." She sat him down, firmly, in a soft chair on the women's side of the room, and then left. Smett was alone, except for - them.

He looked at the women in the chairs around him and smiled, nervously. They all looked different; two had very light brown hair instead of dark, and one had blue eyes, and three of them had those round bulges on their stomachs that meant that they were pregnant with babies in them, and they were all, all, all staring at him.

"Hi," said one of them - could it be that she was saying it shyly? What did she have to be shy about? "My name's Mynna, what's your name?"

"Private Smett. Ma'am."

"And you work in the Bunker? With Davros?" asked one of the others.

"Well, I guard Davros, Davros and the Bunker I mean. I'm not a scientist, I don't actually work with him," Smett clarified. "But I do work around him."

"What's he like?"

"Well, he's Davros. He's a lot, well, more pleasant to be around now that he's out of his support chair and in that new body," said Smett, barely relaxing. Then the nearest women leaned forward. She was very close to him, the prettiest woman he had ever seen. Close enough that he could smell her, her breath and her sweat, and she smelled completely unlike a man, and she was completely intoxicating. All of her.

She stared directly into his eyes, and he looked into her beautiful, guileless face as she asked, "How do men really pee?"

Smett blanched.

 

* * *

 

On the way back, Esselle had snagged another woman, who was a fast and fluid dancer; she rather enjoyed sweeping her across the floor. She thought the contrast between the flowing white robes of her partner, and her own black uniform, was probably quite striking. With a bit of regret she whispered, "Would you like to meet Davros?" and after the appropriate scanning, send her to Davros' hands, and took Dynna back for herself.

Dynna and Esselle danced slowly, moving in a straight line to the table where Gharman was sitting, a stocky figure in black, his eyes drinking in the sight of them. Or at least one of them. They stopped, and Gharman stood.

Face to face the resemblance between the two siblings was quite shocking: they both had the same grey streaks in their hair (though Dynna's hair was down to her elbows, and Gharman's was wavy and short), they both had the same chin, even their general builds were the same. They took after their mother, it seemed.

Gharman tentatively pulled out a chair; Dynna tentatively sat down. They stared at each other for a moment, and then both of them cut their eyes as Esselle in a glance that said Go Away quite clearly. With a smile and an internal salute, Esselle went to see if she could at least convince some of the Elite men to dance with each other, or with some of the other attendees. This was the cream of the crop, the most talented, most honoured group of Kaled men on the planet, and they all wanted to cling to the wall like vines.

She held her hands out a little way as she approached them. Reassuring them that she wasn't about to pounce and start pruning them. "Gentlemen, I'm sure you didn't come here just to stare. Why don't you dance with each other, if not with-" a roll of her head indicated the women.

"But what if we dance and frighten them off?" asked Kravos a little desperately. Esselle felt sympathy: most men's dances that Kravos would be expert at were, well, demonstrative. And apparently he was not remembering his years-ago formal dance lesson very well. "You know, you can tell us. What sort of dances shouldn't we dance?"

Perhaps she could put him at his ease - or at least amuse him. "Well," she said, squaring her shoulders and posing in a way that drew Kravos' eyes irresistibly to her body, "you certainly shouldn't dance like - this."

 

* * *

 

Nyder drifted backwards, out of the Dalek formation. Davros was dancing with General Ferr, a Dalek in attendance on each side. Ferr has security clearance; Davros could be left for a few minutes while he attended to the necessities. He imagined that Ferr and Davros must have a lot to talk about: there were only a few male Kaled mind-to-mind transfer patients.

Nyder stepped back into the main room after visiting the lav, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw something strange, and when he looked straight on it only got stranger. Security Liaison was dancing with Kravos, and they were both dancing a man's role. What they were performing was a very traditional and very vulgar dance: right now her body was promising to impale Kravos on a portion of anatomy that she actually did not possess, and Kravos was grinning like a fool, his body promising to -

Nyder reached in and forcefully yanked her out of step; she stumbled, but managed to follow as Nyder swept her away from the sniggering men.

"Clumsy," he said. "Shouldn't you be a better dancer than that? I presume you stole the knowledge of it from some unlucky fool who died and was processed by the Reflectionists." To be honest he had only seen the slightest uncertainty in her steps, but he would take any opening to attack.

Esselle looked up at him, looking a bit - wistful? "Rian was no fool, and he was an excellent dancer - and yes, he is dead. But he also had considerably longer arms and legs than I do, and the memory of an action does not translate smoothly from body to body. Why do you think I spend hours drilling in combat? I'm adapting this body," she jerked her thumb backwards to indicate herself, "to the forms that my mind knows perfectly."

They were walking along the long wall, scanning the attendees. With a flick of his hand, Nyder dismissed her, and she went off to check on the Elite who had been brave enough to cross that invisible line and sit down in the women's territory. And maybe encourage some of the women to show off their own dances, which could also be quite demonstrative.

 

* * *

 

After getting six women out on the floor in a circle, dancing with each other, Esselle wanted to check on the intent cluster of women around one of the seated Elite. There was something rather predatory about the way they were looking at him, and something a bit too relaxed about the way he was sitting, his back to the room.

When she got closer, she discovered that some of the Kaled women had been very curious about what they had never seen except in pictures. The subject of their attentions was not fighting back.

"Captain Tane," said Esselle, leaning on the couch behind him and turning her own back to the room. "And here I thought you were just a pretty face." The rest of his anatomy was just as pretty: his jacket open and undershirt rolled up to show his muscular bared chest, his pants pulled down (although not enough to show the scars still remaining from an explosion at the Bunker some time ago). The focus of everyone's interest stood to attention. More softly, she murmured, "Are you all right with this?" It seemed Socca had overestimated the modesty of Kaled women. If they wanted to see a man in the flesh, they were bold enough to take matters into their own hands.

She darted her eyes left and right; this was the set of chairs closest to the wall, and everyone's attention was on the dancers in the middle of the room, so nobody was likely to see what was happening unless they walked right up. She subtly moved to hide Tane a bit more from the room.

"Oh yes I'm all right," Tane said huskily, and sucked in his breath as several sets of inexperienced fingers explored him. "Esselle." His eyes rolled up to her. "Do you remember - the night in the Bunker, you came and told me that the war was over?" His face was totally focussed on her, his mouth a little bit open, the dark waves of his hair framing his face.

She smiled. "I do," she said softly. Tane had been asleep in the medical wing, recovering from his injuries. He had been ecstatic at the news; she had pinned him to the bed to keep him from hurting himself as he literally convulsed and screamed with joy. It had been shocking, seeing this normally harsh and snappish man suddenly overcome with emotion; it had been like watching some cold and frozen flower suddenly bloom.

"I'll never forget that. That moment was - the happiest I've ever been. In all my life. Ever." He reached up and put his hand awkwardly on her shoulder, tipping her down towards him; out of the corner of her eye she could see the other women leaning forward, fascinated. "And I didn't ask, but now - kiss me?" His mouth was open a little bit, as though pleading.

With another smile, she did. With their lips locked, she felt him convulse again as he peaked. The women squealed out their reactions.

"Is it supposed to do that?" "Be careful!" "It's not acid, it's just wet." "It's just like in the pictures!" "But it isn't swimming!"

Esselle and Tane paid little attention to those words. After a long and breathless moment, she disengaged, paused, and then kissed him on the nose.

"Thank you Tane," she smiled. "Ladies, thank Captain Tane for giving us such a pleasant demonstration of the male orgasm."

A chorus of thank-you's was accompanied by a napkin, which Tane used to clean himself off. Seeing that he was in good hands, Esselle looked around. The war veterans and the Elite were mingling without coming to blows, there were several couples out on the floor along with Davros, protected by his phalanx of Daleks. Gharman and Dynna were still talking intently at their table. Then she caught sight of another man entering on the men's side, his head bandaged and walking with the uncertain steps of one of the wounded.

Her eyes brightened. "I don't believe it," she said to herself, as she went to greet him.


	5. Time

As she walked towards the men's entrance, Esselle met Socca moving the other way. They touched their elbows together for a few quick dance steps, then spread their arms and stood chest to chest. With deft familiar gestures they touched their heads together, rubbing them a little until their hair parted and let the metal contacts in their heads touch. Now they could communicate mind to mind. Without their conscious attention, they moved and duplicated observations, analyses, memories: synchronising their knowledge. And in the foreground of their minds, they had a conversation.

Esselle went first. ~My feet are killing me. These boots were not made for dancing.~

Socca's reply was wordless emotion. ~(amusement/questioning)~

Esselle continued. ~The men who aren't quite sure of their orientation one way or the other look at me, and their eyes go all bright: she's just like a man, uniform and all, but she's got a vagina! I'm going to have to watch Commander Nyder; try to keep him from reacting badly.~

~He will be jealous?~

~He will be possessive of what he considers his property. No more.~

~Too bad.~

~How are the women holding up?~ Socca as Social Coordinator had worked with Esselle to hand-pick the attendees list; now Esselle was curious as to how their choices had meshed.

~All right. No attacks, a few potential attachments, and thankfully no women brawling with each other over something - that would really push all the wrong buttons.~

~No attacks, maybe, but you should have seen what they did to Captain Tane.~

~(questioning)~

~(a picture of Tane in the women's hands, literally)~

~(laughter) He's going to have quite the tale to tell.~

~I agree. Excuse me, I have someone to meet.~

~Good. Love you, Esselle.~

~Love you, Socca.~

Their heads parted, they nodded to each other and went on in opposite directions. The entire exchange had taken approximately three heartbeats.

 

* * *

 

Nyder had a plain drink in his hand; he had taken it as an excuse to interrogate the drink servers, and confirm that none of the Elite had overindulged - so far. He pinpointed Davros again in his blue-black suit, saw that he was guarded. His eyes traced the paths of all the men and women on the dance floor, made sure that none of them were moving in the wrong way towards Davros. Now, where was Security Liaison? There she was on the men's side, talking to one of the veterans. Nyder was practically on top of them before he realised that he knew this veteran.

It was General Ravon. Ravon's face was strangely blank, and he sat in one of the overstuffed chairs like a man who had been broken and put back together. But it was him. Bandages still covered his head; the patches of scalp visible around the edges showed the stubble of new growth. His eyebrows were growing back.

"Nyder," he said, looking up and recognising the thin man standing over them. Without looking away, Ravon said, "Esselle, a momen' alone with the C'mmander, please?"

She left smoothly and Nyder watched her go, then looked back to Ravon.

"So you call her Esselle," he noted.

"Yes, I do." Ravon moved his legs outwards, spreading them over the floor as though claiming it. "Need to tell you somethin'." His speech slurred a bit, but he was understandable.

Nyder's face showed puzzlement for a moment.

Ravon smiled, his lower eyelids rising. "I've moved t'new quarters. And I take back any invitation f'you to, ah, visit. Until my covva, convalescence is over. I am not - not ready to have visitors."

Nyder blinked. He and Ravon had had an arrangement for some time, and he was a little put out at the thought of giving it up. "What if I ordered-"

Ravon raised his hand and pulled at his collar, bare of insignia. "I'm not a General now, never will be again. And you can't give me the orders you used to."

"You used to appreciate my orders." Orders to bend, to kneel, to lie down. To submit.

Ravon spoke deliberately, getting out each word with care. "I used to love them." A long pause. "But no."

Nyder certainly wasn't going to embarrass himself by asking why. So he turned and stalked off, his grip on the empty cup carefully controlled to keep from crushing it. The wounded man swallowed with relief, watching him leave.

"Ravon," said Esselle softly as she stepped back to his side, "did you just tell Security Commander Nyder to go suck himself?"

"N-not in so many words, but yes." Ravon let a bit of smugness show on his face.

Her hand squeezed his shoulder. "And here I thought you were being strong when you walked in here."

He covered her hand with his. "You - you'll tell me if he ever beds you, though."

"Won't that hurt your feelings?" she asked, concerned.

"It'll be c'completely bizarre. I can't wait." He raised his other hand to his head, touched the neural implants that were set into his rebuilt skull, and laughed. He could feel the implants as too-smooth bumps under the bandages. "Tell me mind to mind. I've told you everythin' I know about him. You tell me wha' you find out about him."

"It's a deal." And more seriously, "And it's wonderful to see you up and walking. I was worried for you, after we transferred you to long-term care in the Dome."

"Glad to know that someone cares." He rolled his eyes for a moment, and smiled. "But acshu-, actually, I left the chair outside."

 

* * *

 

There was some sort of altercation at the men's entrance; Socca was marching away from it with a rather sour expression on her face, robes swishing with every stride. She was stopped by Nyder's elbow pointed at her; rather than argue, she touched her hands to his and they went out onto the dance floor.

"And what was that about?" Nyder asked, staring intently at her between his forearms.

"Someone showed up with a gun and a desire to use it; fortunately he tripped over a powered chair. He'll be waking up in a few hours in time for a brisk flogging."

"An assassin." Nyder sounded almost happy; this was something he understood. "I should want to interrogate-"

"That's not necessary, Commander," she dared to interrupt. "We know who he was here to kill, and why." She brought her elbows closer together, so that he could only see her mouth as she said, "And I can tell you both of those things with one word. His name. Dannik."

Nyder remembered that name, all right. Dannik had known too much about the handling, or rather mishandling, of a certain biological specimen called J29A. Davros had ordered him killed, discreetly, and Nyder had obeyed those orders. But he'd failed - somehow.

"I thought you arranged for Dannik to survive." He still wasn't quite sure how they had done that, in fact. He remembered shooting Dannik, and four other male Laboratory Assistants. But those memories were strangely vague. Usually he remembered killings with more intensity. More pleasure.

"For that specific occasion - the blood that got splattered all over you so convincingly had some chemical additives, designed to interrupt the formation of long-term memories." Nyder flinched; he knew about that drug. Amnesia, they called it. "However, a fragment from the blanks damaged one of Dannik's eyes. We repaired it, but he does still rather have a grudge." She smiled at Nyder. "Losing an eye, even temporarily, can do that."

Without bothering to reply, Nyder led her to the side and broke off the dance. Davros beckoned, and with a measure of relief Nyder went to his side - and then was moved in front so that they could dance. And talk, of course.

"I'm impressed with the quality of the women that have been brought here for me," said Davros, with a smooth hint of gloating in his voice, "And I could take any of them, couldn't I? Just order her to my quarters. None would dare refuse." Davros, being Davros, did not even consider the possibility of a woman saying no.

Nyder looked over his shoulder, briefly. "Do you have one in mind?" His tone was neutral, but inside he was already plotting out the security steps necessary to bring a woman back to the Bunker, get her checked in, and then get her back to the Quarters when Davros was done with her. Maybe Nyder could give her a discreet shot of tranquilliser along the way: he didn't want to risk Davros being rejected, or injured if she put up a fight. Nyder, being Nyder, did consider the possibility of a woman saying no, but was perfectly willing to ignore any morals or law in favour of Davros' will.

"That one, the little one." She was slighter than most of the other Kaled women, possibly younger; and having been scanned and frisked, she was waiting, shifting a little bit from foot to foot, obviously impatient to come and meet the great Davros.

Nyder politely removed one elbow from Davros', and gestured her to take his place. She flashed to him like steel to a magnet, and blurted out in one great nervous rush, "Hi, my name's Riss, did you really invent the Daleks?" And her eyes shone up at him like stars.

Nyder gently relinquished Davros' other elbow, and stepped back as his leader started to expound on his greatest creation. He wondered if Davros would ever get around to ordering her to his bed. Possibly not. Which would solve several potential problems.

Nyder didn't want to move too far away from Davros, so he motioned for Esselle to join him. She would be cover. Prompted perhaps by his lack of expression, she suggested a dance step where the partners touched left elbows, turned their torsos parallel, and stared off in opposite directions. It suited him; it meant he didn't have to look at her face. And he could watch Davros, and she could guard his back.

He frowned to himself, minutely, wondering when it had happened that he would trust this woman to guard his back. She glanced at him and smiled at his lack of a smile, and then winced. Nyder winced as well: a spectacular burst of noise had just come from the far side of the room.

"Oh," said Security Liaison, craning to stand on the tips of her toes. "We thought that might happen."

A rolling series of beats, like a giant drum being pounded, rolled over them. "What is that?" Nyder half-shouted to be heard over the noise, which was so loud they might as well be standing in the drum.

"The Daleks are plugging into the sound system."

"They're supposed to be-" and Nyder stopped talking, instead cutting through the sparse crowd and towards the sound platform. He quickly tallied the Daleks on the dance floor: there were enough to guard Davros, certainly, but some of them were missing. He could sense Security Liaison following him.

"I thought they didn't know anything about music," he snapped. In fact there had been an issue with one of the Daleks needing a short-term memory wipe after getting into some Reflectionist music.

"They know everything there is to know about Kaled music," she said, as the booming noise faded to a series of rapidly interweaving beats that were, thankfully, quieter. "And they are interested in emotional reactions to music, that's probably what they want to test."

There was a group of men and women watching the Daleks; four of the encased mutants had slid themselves onto the equipment platform, and were in the process of apparently absorbing and testing the instrumentation. Using magnetic manipulation and deftly folded plunger-grips, they hauled out wires and circuits from the music generators and affixed them directly to their own casings. Now embedded in the machines, the Daleks looked out at the watchers silently.

"I wonder if they're taking requests?" asked Esselle.

"I wonder why those other Daleks are watching," said Nyder darkly. Four more Daleks were positioned in an arc around the Kaleds. He hoped that this wasn't an experiment on, say, the audio qualities of a crowd being blasted down en masse.

A flurry of unrelated notes came tumbling out of the sound system, and the onlookers laughed. The Daleks jerked, their eyestalks swivelling to look at each other. The Daleks were generating music, but they seemed to be skipping through a series of short tunes - no, through the beginning of tunes, as though riffling through a pile of papers looking for the correct one. There were war marches, Kaled anthems, historical music, children's rhymes; the electronic instruments could simulate anything from white noise to classical orchestration (Nyder thought he heard music from 'The Azure Findings' for a moment, but it was gone before he could be certain). Then the Daleks apparently settled on one song, and started to play the beginning of it.

If they were measuring the emotional reactions of the audience, they must have gotten some very interesting data. Because while that song made all the women clap their hands and practically wriggle with delight, almost every man listening felt his mind quiver with deep shock, and sudden understanding.

The song the Daleks were playing was banned, had been banned for as long as living memory. Men had been flogged for whistling it in the group showers, hanged for having copies of the score. It was a song that was forbidden to be played, or hummed, or written, or spoken of - and yet, somehow, every man had heard enough of it that they recognised the basic tune. It was a simple, totally complete and self-contained piece of music; once you heard it, you never forgot it.

It was called 'Star of Peace', and it was strictly forbidden to play or hum or speak of it - until the war was over.

And now the war was over.

It was!

And the song reached the second section, and every woman in the audience threw back her head and sang the song they had learned in their cradles, the song that they heard over and over again in the Women's Quarters where men never went, the song of peace.

"The Star of Peace has risen" - and one of the men's voices joined in, deeper than the women's, "It burns away the night" - and suddenly everyone was singing, all the men and the women together, all the guards, all the soldiers, all the bureaucrats, everyone was singing under the Daleks' silent gaze. All the words, the whole forbidden song out in the open where anyone could hear it. They were overwhelmed in knowing that the war was over, it was over, forever and ever! Forever and now! The ceiling rang and the walls thundered with music. On and on they sang…

And suddenly Nyder's world went blue and grey, and fluttered. The last thing he felt was a terrible burning in his chest; the last thing he saw was the strangely tilting Daleks, staring at him as he crumpled towards the floor.

The world went away.

 

* * *

 

The world came back. Nyder found himself seated in an overstuffed chair, surrounded by people who prudently all stepped back when he moved.

"Well?" he snapped, his eyes immediately searching for Davros - he was there, looking somewhat concerned. There was a Dalek beside him, watching Nyder as well. "What happened?"

"You fainted, sir." Security Liaison was standing very straight, her hands behind her back and her face a perfect blank.

"I do not faint," Nyder said, pulling himself to his feet.

She corrected herself. "You briefly lost consciousness, sir."

"Why?"

She suddenly frowned awfully at one of the surrounding women, who swallowed her start of a laugh. "You do not seem to have been taught how to sing and to breathe at the same time, sir. So when you started singing, you ran out of air and went over." She pulled one hand into view and mimed Nyder slumping.

"Is this a part of the process of procreation?" rasped the Dalek.

"No," Esselle and Nyder snapped simultaneously, with almost identical glares.

"He's fine now," Davros said dismissively. "Well Commander, if you're ready for one last turn around the floor?" Nyder took Davros' extended elbow with a will. One last turn sounded like they would be leaving soon. At last, at long last, this nightmare would be over.

As they circled the floor, Nyder watched Security Liaison and Socca as they went from man to man, telling them the schedule of departure he presumed. There was a general drift of attendees to the refreshment area to get one last drink.

"The Daleks were fascinated by your response to the music," said Davros. "They asked to dissect you-"

Nyder tripped, but recovered so quickly that Davros didn't notice - he thought. "And what did you tell them?"

"They have this interesting plan for hyper-oxygenating your brain while they dissect it, and monitoring your reactions. All very nicely thought out."

Which meant they were planning to dissect him alive. "What did you tell them, Davros?" Nyder said, leaning forward just a little bit too close.

"I told them no."

"Thank you." The very flatness of Nyder's reply made it ironic, but the irony was lost on Davros.

"They're all so stupid," said Davros, for no apparent reason.

"The Daleks?" It wasn't like Davros to insult his creations.

"No of course not. All these women, these Kaled women from the Quarters, they're attractive enough but they don't know anything! Well, it's not fair to say that they are all stupid. They know nothing because they've been taught nothing. For all I know there might be one there as smart as - as smart as you, say, but with no training, no education…" Davros clucked his tongue.

Nyder, who had bitter reasons to remember growing up smart and untrained, tried not to let those words affect him. He concentrated on following Davros' lead, and keeping the maximum possible distance between their bodies.

 

* * *

 

"But I have to stay, can't you make an exception!" complained the Sergeant, gesturing with one arm. The other was locked firmly around the waist of a breathtakingly elegant silver-haired man, his status indicated by his age (otherwise he would have not lived to have silver hair.) Their expressions when they looked at each other made it clear that the proverbial lightning of love had struck them both, and they were still glowing like embers.

Socca shook her head. "I'm sorry, Systems Coordinator Noy, Sergeant Tevvi. For both of you. Commander Nyder's orders are most specific, all Elite must return to the Bunker after the end of the Event."

"But-" Tevvi looked blasted. "But I can't leave!"

"You can write," suggested Socca. Both Noy and Tevvi looked at her with looks of incomprehension. "The military dispatch system has been redeployed for domestic use. You can write Noy a letter on a piece of paper, and give it to one of the Daughters. We will bring it to him. And he can write back to you."

"You mean mail? We could send letters? Even if they're not - official?" Tevvi was looking away, as though embarrassed by Noy's words.

"Yes," she said simply, and smiled. "Love letters are an old and honoured tradition. So promise to write each other. There will be other Events, other passes. Overnight passes, even." She stepped forward and brushed a kiss across Noy's cheek, and then across Tevvi's. "And I'm happy for you both, so find a place for yourselves. And say goodbye for now."

There actually were plenty of spaces: the lightning had not hit too many people. All of the Kaled women knew each other from long confinement in the Quarters, but there were men who had met that certain special someone, or at least someone special enough. One or two of them were even holding hands with women. A few couples still circled the dance floor. But the Event was definitely winding down, successfully in her opinion.

Socca anticipated having to read a lot of letters out loud to illiterate women, and help them with the harder words. She also anticipated having to take dictation, and bring lots of replies back. Fumbling, badly worded, semi-incoherent letters from men and women just finding their steps in the dance of love.

And there would be missteps of course, as the two halves of the Kaled people started to come together. Painful ones. Misunderstandings, jealousy, hatred, lies, deep and soul-sick wounds inflicted by no more than a glance, a word, a turning away. There were thousands of mistakes yet to be made, and she winced at the thought of the effort necessary to correct them.

But she would correct them all, with the help of her sisters. She'd read aloud until her throat was raw; help compose till her fingers were sore, if necessary. She would work with the Kaleds, teaching, offering, helping, healing. All of them, they all deserved the best. They were worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actor who played Nyder, Peter Miles, was an accomplished singer; no insult was intended or should be inferred.


	6. Sleepless

The Sixth Socialisation Event was drawing to a close. The men had been queuing up without too much protest as their leaders departed; nobody was going to be returned to the Bunker in a sack, apparently. Nyder had left Esselle back there to persuade any stragglers - and bring their names to him, later, for punishment. Now, as their lone car and its Dalek entourage slid along the dark rails, Nyder felt the knots tied along his spine by tension finally, finally start to loosen. Only a few more minutes, and Davros would be safe back in the Bunker, and this would really be over.

And he could get out of this armour; it pinched him, here and there, under his dress uniform. He had concentrated very hard on that pinching sensation when he had danced close to Davros, in order to distract himself. It had worked - mostly. Davros didn't seem to have noticed anything.

"That Dalek that asked to speak to you, right at the beginning of the Event. What was that about?" Nyder asked, tugging at the side of his jacket to try and distribute the pinching.

"Oh, yes. The Daleks want to start experimental testing on their own organic components, by themselves. Without my presence or guidance." A long pause, silent except for the clicking of the rails and the faint humming of the electric motor. "And it made me feel - very proud, for a moment. To see them begin to grow, begin to change themselves - that's a great step forward, Nyder. One that I despaired, sometimes, of them ever making."

He turned to another subject. "Are you surprised I didn't bring a woman back with me?" His knee nudged at Nyder's, and Nyder subtly moved his knee away as though not noticing. "Well, I didn't have to. I ordered two of the Laboratory Assistants to wait for me in my quarters." He paused, as though to see what the other man's reaction would be.

Nyder's reaction was silent puzzlement. What could you possibly do with two women that you couldn't do with one? It wasn't like they had to maintain an excited state the way men did to perform: you could just apply lubrication. He came to the tentative conclusion that the second woman was some sort of back-up - perhaps in case Davros got bored with the first one. But why would he? A woman was a woman.

Of more interest was Davros' surprisingly free speech and gestures. Nyder slid a finger-sized torch from his pocket and said, "Show me your tongue." And when he focussed the light on Davros' face, he saw that his Commander's mouth was dyed a light purple.

He snapped the light off. "How many drinks did you have?"

"Just one of each," said Davros. "It was an interesting sensation."

They sat silent in the darkness, side by side, as the tunnel walls slid endlessly past, with the Dalek lights flickering before and behind their train. Nyder was seething, Davros was - considering. It have been a long time since he'd felt the way he did now. During the long decades he had been chained to his life support system, he had taken the opportunity to manipulate certain chemicals levels within what remained of his body. And now that he was complete and self-contained, it seemed that he was not reaching those peaks that he had before. He missed that unfailing certainty, that driving emotion.

Well. There was plenty of laboratory space available. Perhaps, as a curiosity, he could experiment with some neurochemical enhancers. See if he couldn't have the best of both worlds.

The Daleks ahead of them were suddenly visible as shadows, and another, larger light appeared in the distance. The trip was over.

As soon as the train stopped, Davros was off and checking himself into the Bunker, past the guards who had been punished by having to stand watch. Nyder waited for the second part of the train to arrive. He wanted to make sure that none of the Event attendees were tempted to stay behind, perhaps bailing off their transport at the last minute and walking along the tracks.

 

* * *

 

As the men returned to the Bunker, Nyder made an obvious display of counting them all back in. But they were all here, with Tane bringing up the rear. Esselle was not among the men, but she had access to the Daughters' hidden tunnels. Nyder looked almost disappointed not to have anyone to punish. Instead he sourly praised them for their good behaviour, and dismissed them to their quarters.

When they were alone, Tane asked, "A word with you in private, Commander?"

"In private," and they walked to Nyder's quarters in silence. Outside his door, Nyder stopped and waited.

Tane smiled for an instant as he stood close to the Commander - a bit too close. "I wanted to tell you, Commander, that I - that we, all of us, appreciate you allowing us to attend this Event."

"Noted. And?" invited Nyder, apparently not aware that Tane was standing close enough that he could feel body heat through their uniforms.

"And I wanted to show my own, personal, appreciation." Tane leaned a little bit closer with each of those last three words, and Nyder stepped back - and opened the door to his quarters.

"Inside," he said, and Tane gave a tiny smile and complied.

"You'll have to excuse me," Tane said, loosening the collar of his uniform, "but my legs aren't quite up to kneeling, so if we could lie down?" He gestured, but kept out of the way while Nyder opened his own breeches and arranged himself on the bunk, head and shoulders against the wall and legs stretched out in front of him. From past experience, he didn't start with a kiss. Nyder did not kiss.

He joined the Commander on the bunk. Nyder's face was immobile, but his fingers in Tane's hair were urgent. Tane carefully got on his stomach and side between Nyder's legs, his weight balanced on the side of his hip and one elbow, leaving the other hand free to caress. And began.

Just like the Commander not to take the time to wash first, he thought, tasting loose sweaty skin. But the Commander was clean as a sterilised scalpel usually, so an evening's exertion had not made him unpleasant. In fact, considering the reaction he was getting, the Event seemed to have excited him. Tane didn't have to keep working at him for more than two minutes before Nyder clenched tight, lips and fists and his whole body locking solid, and peaked noiselessly.

Without a further word - Nyder was always dead-silent afterwards, and would just lie there staring - Tane slid himself off the bunk, got to his feet, and left. Out in the corridor, he made certain the door slid shut behind him before he allowed a smirk on his lips.

Esselle wouldn't be getting any use out of Nyder tonight, he thought to himself, feeling the sweet painful sting of jealousy.

 

* * *

 

Nyder rose, stripped off his dress uniform and the armour underneath, put on loose pyjama pants, set the alarum, clipped his glasses to the bed frame, and slid under the thin military-issue blanket. One hand was carefully curled before his chest, and the other was under his pillow, touching his gun. He pressed his back tight to the wall behind him, pulling the blanket a little bit higher so that the cold metal didn't touch his shoulders.

And he didn't sleep.

He couldn't sleep. It was not the new certainty of his orientation that was keeping him awake: it was something that to him at least seemed to be of far greater importance.

Was this - he searched his memory - the first time someone had come to his bed to give, instead of to take? To give with no strings attached, give for something already done that could not be taken back, give with no ulterior motive or excuse? Just to give?

He had memories of sex: bad ones, most of them. Memories of men abusing him, and him returning abuse in return as he rose through the ranks. But even when he was the Elite Security Commander, nobody ever came to him. Nobody ever chose him. He always took them, he was in command-

His fingers clenched at the sheets.

He lay awake for a very long time, thinking.

 

* * *

 

Ravon was awake as well. His sleep cycles were still much distorted due to his injuries, and after the dance he had asked for Esselle's company. As she had not been expecting any other tasks that evening (contrary to Tane's beliefs), she was escorting the ex-General into the Memorial Hall.

This was a huge space: four empty warehouses had had their walls merged, and even now there were plans to expand it. The Hall was so large that the footsteps of the visitors raised no echoes, and even the brightest lights available left great clots of shadow in the high corners. And interlaced on the floor was a huge and complicated diagram, written into the gleaming new-laid tile. The map of the dead.

Every Kaled who had died during the war was here, with their position calculated based on who knew them, and how many knew them. Priority was given to those who still had living people to remember them; the walls were lined with the names of the long-dead, back to those who had died in the nuclear inferno of the war's first seconds. It was like a star-field in reverse: the great white ocean of tiles, and every tiny cluster of black text representing the light of a life that had gone out.

Ravon knew some of these dead. Some of them had died beside him, or died for him. With Esselle to help him, he could make his way through the diagram, find their names. Look at them, talk about them to Esselle. She had shared many of his memories, but his newly rebuilt brain was always making new connections, seeing new things about the men he had known.

Esselle knew some here too. She stopped at Ure (J29A), and Ture; there were modest spots put aside for them, although every Reflectionist on the planet had sprung from their minds.

"Who is this?" asked Ravon, standing patiently nearby; he had his chair with him, but was leaning on the back, using it as a self-propelled crutch to help him walk. She rose and went to stand beside him. There was the name of a young man on the tiles by Ravon's feet: he seemed to have died in training or a little before, according to the too-recent, too-close dates of his birth and death. There were no official honours inscribed by him: no titles or commendations or achievements. But his name was surrounded by little tokens, candles and pictures and notes to him. There were Generals here who had fewer marks of favour than this one name.

"Torc," Esselle said. "He died before he ever fought in battle. Before he ever saw sunlight, or green grass, or a woman's face. Before he ever knew love." She went to her knees, and touched her fingertips to her lips, and then to his name. "But he will never be forgotten. We remember him."

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', Act III  
> PROSPERO:  
> 'Fair encounter  
> Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace  
> On that which breeds between 'em!'  
> Thanks to www iusedtobelieve dot com for an exhaustive list of children's beliefs about sex.  
> Pendants = Kaled term for testicles or bollocks.  
> Peak = Kaled term for orgasm


End file.
